Celebrities should take care when naming children

Peaches Geldof gives an example of why celebrities should be careful when
choosing names for their children

Peaches Geldof, pictured with husband Thomas Cohen , has named her son after a mythical princess
Photo: GETTY IMAGES

6:59AM GMT 25 Nov 2012

SIR – I am writing to you in the hope of getting a message across to Peaches Geldof, who has decided to call her son Phaedra (Mandrake, November 18).

I can only presume that her knowledge of Greek mythology is not very deep, as surely she would surely not wish to make her son a laughing stock and subject of derision and teasing by calling him Phaedra.

I was reminded of having once read the French tragedy Phèdre, by Racine, in my student days, and looked up the reference in my Oxford Companion to English Literature.

It says: “Phaedra, a daughter of Milnos and Pasiphaë, and wife of Theseus. She became enamoured of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus by the Amazon Hippolyta. Her advances being rejected, she accused Hippolytus to Theseus of attempts upon her virtue and caused his death.”

I feel I must do something to stop this dreadful disaster of naming a boy after a really wicked woman.